2016-01-08

Some of the armoured combat vehicles Canada is selling to Saudi Arabia in a controversial $15-billion arms deal will feature medium- or high-calibre weapons supplied by a European subcontractor – such as a powerful cannon designed to shoot anti-tank missiles.

These details shine a light on how lethal a product the Saudi Arabian National Guard – a force that deals with internal threats in the Mideast country – will be getting from Canada.

This contradicts Justin Trudeau’s assertion during the federal election campaign that the deal brokered by the Canadian government was merely for what amount to “jeeps.”

Let's for a moment set aside Shiny Pony's ignorant comments.

G&M commenter Mikey from the GWN said it best: "would the author care to name a military armoured vehicle that doesn't pack a lethal punch?". After all, even military support personnel (like mechanics or first aiders) are trained in combat techniques and carry firearms when on deployments. There's a certain naivite in the ignorance of Steven Chase and Daniel LeBlanc who wrote the article.

CMI, which manufactures turrets and cannons, announced in 2014 that it had signed a large contract with a “Canadian vehicle manufacturer” to supply two gun systems, including a medium-calibre weapon and the Cockerill CT-CV 105HP, which it advertises as a “high-pressure gun with an advanced autoloader to deliver high lethality at very light weight,” one with the capacity to fire 105-mm shells and a heavy-armour-penetrating missile. CMI did not name the Canadian company.

In France, where CMI’s campus is located, a local municipal official said CMI is doing work for General Dynamics and its armoured vehicle contract with Saudi Arabia. In an interview, Jean-Philippe Vautrin, president of the Communauté de Communes du pays de Commercy, said CMI will start training the Saudis on the turrets and cannons in 2017, using simulators on the campus site but also a nearby artillery range.

He said the Saudis will learn how to operate the wheeled portion of the LAVs on Canadian soil.

Now, as I promised, let's get back to Rat Bastard 2.0's mid-election contention that what Canada was selling the Saudis was "only for jeeps". Yes, obviously the pathetic man-child is a retarded moron for being so ignorant. Yes, obviously armoured vehicles are closer to tanks than to jeeps. But re-read the second quoted part of the article above. CMI manufacturers turrets and cannons. There's a huge likelihood that those systems will never appear on Canadian soil. The Saudis are being trained on the weapons systems in Europe, remember. Then they receive a turret featuring high pressure guns with advanced autoloaders, simultaneously receiving a vehicle from Canada. In other words, what Canada is building for the Saudis looks a lot like this:

Meanwhile, what the Saudis will be driving around at the end of the day will look like this:

So Trudeau certainly isn't correct in what he said, but he isn't entirely wrong. Canada is building an armoured vehicle, and a European company is building a weapons system. It's unclear from the article whether the $4.9B value contract with CMI is contained within General Dynamics' $15B contract or not. I suppose its entirely possible that a weapons system can make up 1/3rd of the cost of a military vehicle. But then you read this:

The full number of combat vehicles Canada will sell to the Saudis has never been released – some arms trade experts estimate it could be in the thousands – but a French municipal official told The Globe and Mail on Wednesday the transaction CMI is involved with concerns about 700.

According to About.com, the cost to replace a U.S. armoured vehicle is around $1M each though Army-Guide.com lists prices between $282,000 and $2.6M depending on the size of the batch and the customer. 700 vehicles costing $15B would be $21M per vehicle, and that's patently ridiculous. Let's assume instead $4M per vehicle which would still be the most expensive armoured vehicles around. That gives us 3,750 vehicles, which still seems high for a 14-year contract (267 vehicles a year? That's nine vehicles every twelve days). Likely the contract also includes technical support (we know it includes training) which over a 14 year period can easily be $200M a year and shaving $2.8B off the price tag and dropping our estimate to 3050 vehicles. So let's say 3000. We should also note that the General Dynamics contract is for 14 years and the CMI contract is for "more than 15" years, even though we know the CMI contract is apparently only for 700 units. That means a lot more training and logistics and other support must be part of the CMI contract: within three-and-a-half years the 700 vehicles CMI is building guns for will be built. For this and a few other reasons it's likely that the $4.9B CMI contract is not part of the General Dynamics contract.

So what does that mean? Well, it means that like the eponymous broken clock, Rat Bastard 2.0 isn't that that wrong when he says that Canada is basically selling Jeeps. We're providing the physical vehicle, and other contractors are providing the weapons (for 700 of them, it's CMI). Of all the idiotic and retarded things this embarassing load of shit has said over the years, at least this one isn't quite as idiotic and retarded as some of the others.